LITTLE ROCK — Pulaski County Special School District attorneys are asking a judge to permit a New York attorney to join in the district’s defense against a lawsuit filed by the teachers’ union to retain its recognition as the contract bargaining agent for teachers.
Keith Billingsley, who represents the district along with Jay Bequette, has askedPulaski County Circuit Judge Tim Fox to allow Lyle Zuckerman, a partner in New York City’s Vedder Price law firm, to assist in the case pro hac vice.
That means Zuckerman would be able to participate in this particular case even though he is not licensed to practice law in Arkansas.
The Pulaski Association of Classroom Teachers, represented by Clayton Blackstock of the Mitchell, Blackstock, Barnes, Wagoner, Ivers & Snedden law firm in Little Rock, sued the district after the School Board voted in December and again in April to no longer recognize the association as the bargaining agent for the district’s 1,200 teachers.
The board’s plan is to replace the union-negotiated teacher contract with a newcontract based on district personnel policies, effective Thursday.
Blackstock has argued that the current contract between the district and teachers remains in effect until a successor agreement is negotiated. To put into place a new contract is a breach of the current contract, the association contends.
A hearing in the case is set for 8:30 a.m. Monday.
According to the Vedder Price website, Zuckerman is a member of his firm’s labor and employment practice section and for more than 12 years has represented management in all matters of labor and employment law. He is a graduate of the FordhamUniversity School of Law.
Tim Clark, president of the School Board, said this week that Zuckerman will be paid $440 an hour for his work, an amount that Clark said is less than Zuckerman’s standard rate of more than $500 an hour.
Clark said he expects that Zuckerman will make only one or two trips to Arkansas because he has reviewed documents in the case and told district leaders that the Bequette & Billingsley firm has done what was necessary to put the district in a good position in the case.
Clark called Zuckerman a “think out of the box” attorney with a good reputation “and the expertise to help the district get back on its feet without the assistance of a union.”
“He enjoys this kind ofwork, he told me, because he knows the end results will help the children,” Clark said.
Fox in April declared the School Board’s December vote to end union recognition null and void.
The judge said the district had the authority to terminate the professional negotiations agreement with the teachers’ union, but that the board had not meet prerequisite legal requirements to do so.
The board did not have in place a set of personnel policies or a personnel policy committee that are required by state statutes, the judge ruled. The board acted outside the law, Fox said.
The board voted again in April to sever ties with the teachers’ association effective June 30, at which timethe board’s newly approved personnel policies would become the basis for teacher contracts.
In addition to the association’s lawsuit against the district, individual teachers have filed a second lawsuit against the district challenging the process the district has used to develop new contracts.
The district has asked that the two cases be consolidated. Blackstock said this week that he hasn’t opposed the reason for the motion.
“How much of it will be consolidated is probably still an issue,” he said. “The facts are pretty much the same for both. It doesn’t make much sense to have two hearings where people testify to the same facts. There are different legal issues in each case.”
Arkansas, Pages 11 on 06/26/2010